President Joe Biden (D) said in his speech Friday announcing his selection of DC Circuit Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as his nominee for the Supreme Court that “it’s time our courts looked like America.”
Nothing could be less accurate or more Extreme Left.
Our Article III courts—and our State and local courts, as well—are not, and were not, designed to reflect the demographics of our nation. That’s the role of the political arms of our governments, Federal, State, and local. Those political arms are populated by men and women elected by their fellow citizens to be Representatives, Senators, President of our nation, and analogously at the State and local levels. Those are the folks who should look like the demographics of our nation and their State and district constituents. And they do—that’s what our elections achieve, however clumsily.
Our courts were set up, instead, to be independent of those political arms, independent of demographics. The judges and Justices appointed to those courts were given lifetime appointments explicitly to keep them independent of politics. Our courts were created and the judges/Justices are appointed to them for the sole purpose of applying our Constitution and any statutes before them in any particular case as they were written.
Doing that requires no particular demographic on the bench nor any pattern of demographics. It requires only that they honor our Constitution, which holds that legislation is the sole province of the Congress, and that they honor their oaths of office, which hold them to upholding and defending our Constitution and to treat all men and women before them equally under law, without favor or preference of any sort—including demographic.
Being a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences is irrelevant to the role of a judge or Justice. Being a black is irrelevant to the role of a judge or Justice. Being a woman is irrelevant to the role of a judge or Justice. Being an American citizen applying the text of the Constitution and the statute(s) as they are written is the role, the only role, of a judge or Justice.
Applying gender or race, or religion, is simply bigotry. Selecting a person for judge or Justice because of gender or race, or religion, is simply bigotry.
Full stop.